


Constant Meddling

by Broba



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-21
Updated: 2012-02-21
Packaged: 2017-10-31 13:27:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, the kinkmeme prompt called for Kanaya's constant meddling to catch up with her (hence the title,) and naturally the first thign that came to mind is, I should set this in a 1940's newspaper office. Because FIGHT ME I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Constant Meddling

The blisteringly hot summer of '48 would come to be known as the election year that gripped the City, in a way that none other had. There would be elections to come and there had been elections past, but this one belonged specifically to the City and the events surrounding those fateful ballots carried with them an indelible sense of place. Wherever voters gathered to cast their lots, for one brief moment in time they were all Citizens, like it or not. There was a sense up and down the country that a turning point was being reached, the war was behind them and a new decade was approaching fast, a decade as yet unformed and undetermined, malleable and capable of change.  
  
Kanaya roared through the press room like a tornado, there was no way to make oneself heard above the usual din except by adding to it. She stopped at practically every desk with her dreaded green editing pencil, scribbling notes and changes onto copy even as it was being tapped out by hapless news-hounds. She never said a word more then she had to, she just made it damn clear what she wanted and moved on, and she just couldn't bear to let so much as a word run down to the Linotype guys in the basement without her personal approval. The Herald was run in accordance with her iron-fisted rulings, and even the shareholders respected her final editorial word. She was the first and only female editor in the City and had always made damned sure that not a man-jack of her staff gave her less then a hundred percent.  
  
Her office was cramped, and made more so by the boxes, files and papers stacked higgledy-piggledy everywhere giving the place a nest-like aspect. She slammed the rickety door closed, making the Venetian blinded window bearing her name rattle, and threw herself into her wooden desk-chair. She lit a well deserved cigarette and put out the match with an angry swishing motion before stabbing the bright white switch on her desk intercom with an immaculately manicured thumb, causing an identical unit to buzz angrily for attention on a desk outside.  
  
"Yahboss," said her secretary, mashing the syllables together in her hurry to answer.  
"What's the word on the big guy?" There was only one story in town that night, and no mistaking who she could be asking about.  
"It's all sixes and sevens chief, Egbert is heading down-town right now to deliver his big speech against the senator."  
"Egbert! That communist! He's a blow-hard but he's got a monkey on his back for the unions, what's the word?"  
"Word is he's going to hit the bricks from here to Albany preaching to the converted, it's nothing we haven't covered a thousand times before chief is it really worth bothering about?"  
"Hot air floats balloons!" She quoted her favourite self-penned aphorism, "and that man is full of it! Who have we got on him?"  
"Now, Chief, I just want to say-"  
"Don't give me your ordinary flim-flam, I'll show you the narrow side of a wide door!"  
"I just want you to calm down a little first,"  
"Let's hear it, and make it snappy!"  
"It's Strider."  
"Strider! Girl you're apt to give me a conniption fit! Who decided to send out the fruit?"  
"Come on Chief, you know how he doesn't like that kind of talk,"  
"I'll talk the talk I feel like talking in my own damn newssheet! Any man who writes my fashion column is a indoor gypsy, and who put him on Egbert? So help me if this is a sex thing..."  
"It's not that Chief! There just wasn't anyone else to send, all the boys are on cases! Cross my heart and hope to die, Chief!"  
"Vantas?"  
"He's not been in the office, he's coming in with the copy on the Shanghai Surprise story later today."  
"Soon as he gets in, you send him straight up here, you reading what I'm writing?"  
"Ten-four, Chief."  
"And get Lalonde up here, tell her to deep-six whatever she's got on the boil and stick it in the back-oven, I won't have the biggest story this side of D-Day covered by the only pen jockey on my team who's as straight as a three dollar bill."  
"I don't think that's-"  
  
She snapped off the intercom and swivelled her chair to put her feet up on the desk, she had already put the conversation out of her mind. There were at least fifteen things that she, personally, had to oversee in order to get the evening edition into the shape she wanted it in, and that was not counting the overarching projects that fell outside the day-to-day running of the paper. Tilting her chair back on it's complaining castors she blew a long skein of smoke into the air, it was a gray snake dappled and striped by the late sunlight slanting through her blinds. Suddenly, she was racked by a fit of coughing. She took a drag, then another, to calm her lungs but smoking wasn't helping so much recently. She just couldn't seem to shake the cough, and her throat was feeling thicker every day. She refused to bow down to the demands of illness however, for that would only bring on the inevitable chatter about a woman doing the work of a man. She wouldn't let anyone call her a knickerbocker in a rainstorm, not while there was breath in her body!  
  
Lalonde let herself into the office without knocking, when the Chief called it was well known that speed too priority over manners, "You wanted to-" she stopped. Kanaya was tilted right back in her chair, her head lolling back over the rest, and snoring softly. Rose couldn't help but smile. She carefully rearranged the desk where Kanaya had haphazardly left a sheaf of papers lying, and took the cigarette now cold and dead from her fingertips to stub it out in the overflowing ashtray, the one with a horrible looking palm tree embossed on the side along with the legend "SUNSHINE STATE."  
  
Kanaya woke up with a snort and almost fell off her chair, she realised she was not alone and groaned, "Oh, no, how long was I out Lalonde?"  
"Can't have been more'n twenty minutes Chief, don't worry about it."  
"Don't worry , she says! Ye gods and little fishes, am I the only one in this office who takes this job seriously? Am I alone in thinking we are dealing with the biggest scoop this century?"  
"We did just come through a world war you know Chief, there's bigger things out there," replied Lalonde with a slightly chiding tone.  
"Bygones!" Said Kanaya with an airy flick of her wrist that consigned the conflict of a generation to the scrapbook, "I'm talking about now! Right now! Today! Stories don't wait for you to write them Lalonde, and you can bet your last red cent that Senator English isn't going to wait for us to be good and ready before he pulls some underhanded trick out of his Boston sleeve!"  
  
It was well known that of all his multifarious deficiencies, Kanaya was most unforgiving of the fact that Senator English was an out-of-towner, and a Bostonian to boot. The source of this bizarre and highly specific prejudice had never been determined.  
  
"Chief, you're pushing this too hard! You're starting to fray at the edges."  
"Sure, and English is going to be the one to pull my thread, I know it. Listen up Lalonde, if it leaves this room that I took a powder, you'll be hung out to dry faster then you can say "I Like Ike," see?"  
"Scout's honour, Chief, I'll take it to the grave," Rose frowned, "I really am worried though, have you looked in a mirror recently? You're looking a bit green."  
"It's the latest look in Paris, just ask the Naval Draft Board when he gets back with the Egbert story."  
"You mean David? I don't follow that one..."  
"Always looking for seamen."  
"Oh, Chief, you are the living end!"  
Kanaya smiled, but she was flagging and it took effort, "Someone has to keep you monkeys up the tree."  
"Chief? You're looking a bit flushed there, I really think you need to take a break!"  
"Sure, I'll take a break, just as soon as I-" Kanaya stopped to take a breath, the room was blurring. She put a hand to her head and felt prickly heat, yet at the same time she was sure the room was getting a chill. Her hand came away wet. "What's?" She managed to ask before slumping back.  
  
Rose let out a cry of surprise and got to get feet, darting around the desk. There was no doubt about it, the Chief was sick and from the look of her she had been for some time, not that she'd let anyone know about it. Rose tried to pull open the tiny office window but it was painted shut, she could manage no more then a crack.  
  
"This is serious Chief, you need a doctor!"  
"No," Kanaya murmured, "no doctors, bunch," she sighed, "bunch of snake oil peddling quacks anyway, I just need to catch my breath," but her eyes had closed again, she was drifting.  
  
Rose pushed a few cartons of files off the couch which occupied one wall of the office and had served as a makeshift shelf for over a year. One wall of the office which faced into the main floor was half-height, with windows going up to the ceiling. Normally the view was obscured by blinds, and Rose adjusted them to make sure it was impossible to see in. She threw one of Kanaya's arms around her shoulder and heaved, getting the Chief up with some difficulty, and manoeuvring her to the couch. The Chief tried to complain about it all the way, but she didn't have the energy for more then a token resistance. Rose felt her forehead with the back of a hand and frowned in concern.  
  
"This isn't good, you're really burning up! God why didn't you say something?"  
"Say what," croaked Kanaya, "say what? Besides, I'm fine I just need a rest."  
"No, you've got a fever. That means it's getting serious, they can get very bad very quickly."  
"Well get a load of Nurse Lalonde, you keep a thermometer in your purse too?"  
"Now don't be prickly, I'm trying to help. My mother used to be the same way, she'd never let me help when she was too damn soused to stand."  
"This is a chance to play good daughter then? Not interested Lalonde, I decided long ago I  need bun in the over like I need a hole in the head and I need a cigarette not a water wagon."  
Rose sucked on her lip and plumped up the couch cushion behind Kanaya's head as best she could, "that was pretty low, Chief," she muttered.  
Kanaya looked away, she realised she had hit a nerve but it was hard for her to back down, especially with an employee. "Egbert will be making his speech about now. If the French tart doesn't get me some good copy I'll throw him to the birds."  
Rose went to the water cooler in the far corner and filled a dixie-cup. "Why are you so hard on David anyway, Chief?"  
"Question time? You're taking advantage of the infirm."  
"You said you were a fit as a butcher's dog, right? Drink." She held the cup to Kanaya's lips, the Chief didn't try to take it from her. She just closed her eyes and took a few sips.  
"I shouldn't have hired him, boy is nothing but trouble."  
"His articles play well to the housewife set, they can't get enough of his catty opinions."  
"Housewives! I'm trying to run a serious sheet here."  
"Where the females go, the advertisers like to be there waiting. Admit it, he brings in good revenue."  
"Hm."  
"So what is it then? Do you just not like him?"  
"I guess I have to explain myself to his good fairy godmother?"  
"Something like that, so shoot me if I like the guy."  
"You're barking up a tree so wrong it's a lamp-post, sister."  
"Oh come on, there's no reason not to be friends with someone just because they, you know,"  
"I think every reader we have knows."  
Rose looked at her seriously, and held out the cup again, "Drink. And that's no answer, as you well know."  
"I'm tired, Lalonde." She coughed.  
"You do it to yourself. Always keeping everyone at arms-length, when you need a helping hand where does that leave you?"  
"At arms-length is where I like my helping hands, thank-you."  
"You're impossible," but Rose was smiling now. "Try to relax. Here-"  
  
She loosened Kanaya's blouse and unbuttoned the severe collar. For her part, Kanaya groaned in relief, and let herself relax a little, but her blouse was constricting, and she could feel it tugging at the waist of her skirt when she breathed. Kanaya fumbled with another button, but Rose had to help her.  
  
"If we're going to be stuck in this office together, and I assume we will as there is no way you're walking out of here and I know if I try to go get help you'll shoot me, then you'd better let me just help you," said Rose curtly. She pulled open Kanaya's blouse fully and untucked if from her skirt. She wore a classy brassiere underneath, it looked like one of the new ones with nylon and elasticated straps. Rose smiled inwardly, that said everything about the Chief. Curt and efficient on the surface, and just as much so underneath. They watched the sun begin to set below the horizon line formed by the City skyscrapers, and Rose mopped Kanaya's brow with a handkerchief, keeping her supplied with dixie-cups.  
  
"The speech will be done now," said Kanaya, barely able to keep a weary slur from her words, "even Egbert runs out of gas eventually."  
"People listen to him, he has a good shot I think."  
"Against Senator English? Sure and come back tomorrow sister, I got a bridge to sell you. Don't you think English has already figured every angle? Dollars to doughnuts he knew every word of Egbert's speech yesterday."  
"You're just a cynic."  
"On the contrary I'm a true believer- I'm just not buying what anyone on a soapbox is selling. The truth is in the written word. The newspapers are where the real battle has to be won, Lalonde."  
"Is that why you drive yourself so hard like this? You want to change the world?"  
"What's wrong with that? The world stinks."  
"Says you."  
  
Whatever Kanaya replied was barely coherent, she just mumbled under her breath. Rose had sat herself on the rolling chair the editor used, beside the couch. Kanaya abruptly rolled and would have flopped off the couch entirely except that Rose caught her. Kanaya just dropped her head in Rose's lap and moaned in her fever. It would get worse before it got better, but at least she had the strength to bicker. Rose casually stroked Kanaya's hair, just sitting there in silence patiently.  Everyone in the office knew their job, Kanaya had them whipped into a fearful but efficient team, and if the Chief wasn't personally present for one night, well the presses would still roll, the copy would still run and the news would still go out even without the benefit of the green editing pencil.  
  
Kanaya had said that the real battle would be fought in the newspapers, and maybe there was something to that. Rose had been working on a story about the decline of several smaller presses who could no longer compete against the big City sheets, they were being bought up one by one and she didn't have many doubts who was signing the checks. If a battle really was coming, they would need their Chief in fighting form, so Rose watched over her and stroked her hair, and whispered fragments of rhyme she half-remembered her own mother slurring at night. The sun set, and the room was stifling, but Rose felt the Chief shiver.


End file.
